FORMER opposition legislator Pishai Muchauraya has said aloud what many in Zimbabwe’s opposition circles only whisper.
The opposition, as we once knew it, is dead.
Gone are the days of a firebrand movement that rattled the corridors of power and forced the ruling elite onto the defensive.
What remains today is a hollowed-out shell — adrift, predictable and increasingly irrelevant.
Years of unfulfilled promises, a chronic lack of seriousness from opposition leadership, Judas Iscariot-style betrayals and a toxic mix of internal mismanagement and strategic stagnation have slowly suffocated the life out of the opposition.
Instead of renewal, there has been inertia.
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Instead of organisation, chaos.
Instead of courage, comfort.
At the weekend, Muchauraya was officially confirmed as a Zanu PF member during a cell verification meeting held at Folkington Farm Cell in ward 33 of the Makoni South constituency — a symbolic moment that underscores a deeper political decay.
“For the opposition, it cannot always be about making promises without action and producing results,” Muchauraya said.
“There are a lot of unfulfilled promises made by the opposition.
“The nation and its people now want progress, not political rhetoric.”
That assessment is difficult to dispute.
For years, opposition parties have threatened to unseat the government through constitutional means.
They promised a new Zimbabwe flowing with honey and milk.
Yet election after election, those promises have remained a mirage — grand slogans unsupported by strategy, mobilisation or discipline.
The opposition has mastered the art of rhetoric, but failed miserably at execution.
It reacts instead of plans.
It fractures instead of consolidates. It elevates personalities over institutions and confuses noise for power.
Meanwhile, Zanu PF plays the long game.
It identifies weak links, exploits ambition, and neutralises threats through co-option, inducement and infiltration.
Opposition leaders cry foul when defections occur, yet do little to build resilient structures that can withstand pressure.
Complaining about “sell-outs” has become a convenient substitute for introspection.
The uncomfortable truth is that many opposition parties are not undone by repression alone, but by their own internal rot.
Endless leadership squabbles, lack of ideological clarity, poor grassroots presence and a refusal to adapt have rendered them incapable of presenting a credible alternative.
Zimbabweans are not stupid.
They can smell unserious politics from a distance.
What the public wants is not endless Press statements, court challenges without follow-through, or recycled promises every election cycle.
They want competence, coherence and conviction.
If the opposition is to rise again as a meaningful force, it must undergo painful, but necessary renewal.
That means new leadership, new strategies and a fundamentally new way of thinking.
It means building institutions instead of worshipping individuals.
It means organisation over theatrics, discipline over entitlement, and substance over slogans.
Without that reckoning, defections like Muchauraya’s will continue — not as isolated incidents, but as symptoms of a movement that lost its way long ago.
And until the opposition confronts its failures honestly, the corridors of power will remain unshaken.